The Floral Jacket

Do you believe in fate? Do you believe in it when it comes to love?

I don’t.

Or rather, I didn’t.

Fate was more like the falling petals of a flower. Wilting away slowly, falling with the passing seasons. Unpredictable, yet beautiful in a sense. Life is unpredictable yet also way too predictable.

If I were to summarise it in one word, it would be grey.

The suits I wear.

Grey.

The people around me.

Grey.

My name might as well be ‘Grey’, for that is all that I am. Every single day is absolutely the same. I am simply a cog in the machine of grey. A cog that doesn’t question what it is supposed to do and follows along to ensure the machine continues to produce the products of grey for the other grey people.

If I know what the following day is going to be, then could you call that fate? Perhaps so, but I wouldn’t call it that.

Grey is despair. It is but a shade of darkness.

Fate, on the other hand, is supposed to be hopeful—something colourful in this bland world. Yes, fate was something I regarded as a fool’s dream. Something that Mankind, no, Greykind devised to keep us producing the same old meaningless products and services. To keep us in line. To keep us grey. If you are grey, you can’t complain.

The fate of love was a lie. A lie created to keep us nondescript folk serving while others can enjoy the fruits of our labour. That’s my belief surrounding fate. That was until now.

An unfamiliar chime and a vibration in my hand. A foreign weight that troubled the very monotonous routine I had come accustomed to. I opened my eyes and glanced down at the object.

A phone.

My phone?

No.

An unknown phone. It was a similar standard-issued phone. Grey, just like my phone. But it was not my phone.

A flash of red flicked by as it softly vibrated.

Despite its similarities, even sharing the same case, there was but one noticeable difference. A twisting red, hand-woven phone charm. Small and almost unnoticeable in the dark. If the string hadn’t brushed against my hand while it vibrated, I would have never even suspected it to be any other than my own.

How did I get it? Why do I have it? So many questions, but each one without an answer.

I tried to recall last night, but after a few drinks, it was a bit of a blur. A blur to try and forget the colourlessness of the world.

But even through the haze of the intoxication, one memory remained vivid—the woman.

Sure, in this world, there are many women. They aren’t any more or less remarkable than anyone else in this world. There were plenty at the bar last night. Several on the streets. Why do I remember this one woman? Why did she leave an impression upon me, unlike any of these other bland people?

She was the only one who was not grey. She was the woman with the floral jacket.

The phone stopped vibrating, snapping me out of my memories. A message quickly flashed on the screen.

Missed Call, Unknown Caller.

Perhaps it was for the best.

What are the chances it was the woman with the floral jacket? Why should I get my hopes up?

It would just be another dull person looking for their grey phone—the same as ever.

A moment later, it began to vibrate again. This time, the entire screen lit up. It was so bright that it illuminated the whole room.

An orange background flashed on the phone’s lock screen—an orange-hued sunset, not one of the default backgrounds that came with every phone of this make.

A name appeared on the screen as it rang.

Unknown caller.

Should I answer?

It’s not my phone.

What if someone suspects I stole it?

These thoughts. The ones of avoidance. The insecurity that reiterate a need to follow the grain. To not rock the boat or be a disruptor. The ones that the machine of normalcy had conditioned me into following. The thoughts of an unremarkable person.

But unlike all the other grey moments of my life, this time, I had two options.

Red to hang up or green to answer.

I looked down at the vibrating phone. Slowly, I raised my index finger and gently pressed the green answer button.

The moment I answered, I was at a loss for words. Why did I answer? That was unlike me. I should have left it be. But I couldn’t do that now. I was forced to wait with bated breath for the response of the other end.

I could make out some faint breathing on the other end of the line before a soft response.

“Hello?” I ask into the phone. In turn, I was greeted by a woman’s voice.

“Ah, thank goodness someone picked up. I’m Azumi, the owner of the phone you have. I think I have your phone.”

My phone? It only just occurred to me; if I have someone else’s phone, they must have mine.

Before I could muster a response, the woman continued.

“Are you the person I bumped into last night? I think we must have accidentally grabbed each other’s phones by mistake.”

We grabbed each other’s phones last night?

I tried to recall what had happened the night before. But my mind flashes back to the woman with the floral jacket. Could Azumi be her?

The previous day was much like any other day. I worked at the factory, producing countless products I did not care for.

I worked from nine to five every single day, except when I was required to work longer, often without pay. Yesterday was one of those days. A small technical fault halted the machines for a few hours, so I had to make up for the lost time afterwards. Meaningless products don’t make themselves.

It was soul-crushing work.

The overtime meant I missed the last train. Walk or have a drink. If I drank, it meant I would have to work longer, but if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to maintain my sanity.

I drank the bleakness away.

After some time and countless drinks, I decided to trek back to my place on foot.

It didn’t help that it was a chilly evening. There had been mild drizzle throughout the day. But by the time I had left the bar, what began as a slight pitter-patter was now a torrential downpour.

The icy rain created a heavy mist as it struck the ground, and a darkness descended that could only come from a dreary winter evening.

In other words, it was a cold, miserable evening. A miserable evening that only further reminded you how soul-crushing your work and your entire existence were.

It was a miserable, wet evening that I had to endure with an umbrella, which was constantly losing out against the onslaught of the wind. If it were just a matter of the wind being strong, that would be one thing, but the sea breeze cut into you.

Each gust chilled to the bone. There was absolutely no reprieve, and each time it blew, the umbrella gave out once more. I was left more wet and tired than if I had run in the rain. Before long, the umbrella gave up, broken beyond repair.

Before long, like the umbrella, I had given up. Perhaps I gave up long ago. Hence, the grey of my existence, a mere shadow of my former colourful self, a ‘me’ of long ago. But now I was in the rain, so completely soaked that each step made a squish sound of the water seeping through my socks.

The wetness of my blazer and the small cold stings of the rain reminded me I did indeed exist.

With nothing else to do, I ran towards my house. As I passed through the local park, which was midway between the bar and my place, I was suddenly halted as I collided with something, or rather, someone.

I fell backwards, landing in a sitting position.

I looked up as the rain continued to fall around me, bouncing up from the concrete footpath. Instantly, the colourless world was dissipated as if painted by a vibrant brushstroke.

In front of me was a woman who appeared to be in her mid-to-late twenties. Her soft, blue eyes were striking and drew out the richness of her flowing, wavy, violet hair.

But despite her striking appearance, the most striking of all was her outfit. She wore a jacket that appeared to be made of stitched-together denim with yellow, homemade sewn patches in the shape of flowers.

I wanted to know more.

How could someone dress like that?

What gave her the strength to stand out so vibrantly? How did she come to embrace such a bold aesthetic?

In a world of suits in various shades of the same hues, her denim floral-patched jacket was a colourful splash of life. A shattering of the monochrome of my life. The despair, the hopelessness, all lost in this moment, lost in the rainbow of flowers, the flowers on the woman’s floral jacket.

Was she trying to make a statement, or was this just her?

Either way, it was different.

Especially to me.

The plain and simple me.

Perhaps I longed for a change. Maybe I longed for someone to transform my monochrome existence into a garden of colour.

Perhaps deep down, I longed to meet the woman with the floral jacket. Perhaps it was fate to meet her; perhaps she would be the one to remind me what it meant to be hopeful.

But just as quickly as this sudden encounter occurred, it ended.

She rapidly scooped up her phone and apologised before running off, disappearing into the mist of the rain.

The last bit of colour vanished alongside her, and I was forcefully snapped back to the monochrome of the world.

I picked up the phone on the ground, what I had assumed at the time was mine, and stumbled back to my place—resigned to the bleakness of the world.

“Hello?” she asked again, snapping me back to the present.

I finally mustered up the confidence to respond.

“Yes, I remember. Last night out in the rain, right?”

“Did you bump into more than just me last night?” She replied before letting out a light laugh. “I kid, I’m glad it is you.”

What did she mean by that? If I were a colourful person, I might think she was suggesting she was happy to reunite with me. But I was not that. I was grey. So she probably meant she was pleased to know where her phone was.

“You said your name was Azumi, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I should introduce myself properly,” I replied, ensuring that I would not once again miss my chance to learn even a smidge more about the woman in the floral jacket. “I’m Riku. Once again, I’m so sorry about last night.”

“Don’t be. It was just as much my fault.”

There was a brief silence; although it felt somewhat awkward, it was also warm.

“Can we meet at the same park as last night to exchange the phones?

“I could do that.”

“Then would around midday work for you?”

I moved the phone away from my ear to check the time.

The purple clock on the wall indicated it was only a little past ten. Meeting Azumi around lunchtime was easily doable. Yet there was something else. Something was nagging at me—something that felt wrong about simply exchanging phones.

Azumi had totally captivated me when we met, and now, with each other’s phones, I had a taste of colour. Colour amongst all this greyness. I didn’t want to return to that bleakness again.

As if a rainbow burst into the room. All the grey was coloured into a vibrant range of hues.

“Um, rather than just meeting at the park and swapping phones, would you be interested in meeting at a cafe instead.”

There was a slight pause before she replied with warmth in her voice.

“I would like that.”

The random events that I had assumed were merely probable events may indeed be that thing called fate. The hope and colour within this bland world. The colour of the woman with the floral jacket—the colour brought to me by Azumi.

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End